To experiment with the various libraries introduced in this book, you will need the J2SE 1.5 SDK, which can be obtained from http://java.sun.com. The examples in this book were developed in Eclipse, which can be downloaded from the Eclipse project site at http://www.eclipse.org. All of the examples in this book can be compiled and packaged using Apache Maven. For more information about Apache Maven, see Maven: The Definitive Guide a free, online book available from Sonatype.
Each chapter contains instructions for downloading the various Apache Commons components; to download any component from Apache Commons, go to the Apache Commons page at http://commons.apache.org/ and click on "Binaries" under "Download" in the left menu.